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ADDRESS 



UNVEILING OF THE STATUE 



OF 



COLONEL PRESCOTT, 



BuNKEK Hill, June 17, 1881. 



BY 



."4 



/ 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP 



ADDRESS 



THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE 



OF 



Colonel William Prescott, 

ON BUNKER HILL, 

June 17, 1881. 



BY 



; 



fXi 



ROBERT C/ WINTER OP. 




CAMBRIDGE: h' ■ 
JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

SSnibersttg ^rcss. 
1881. 






ADDRESS. 



Fellow-Citizens : — 

I CANNOT assume the position which belongs to me 
to-day, as President of the Bunker Hill Monument 
Association, and enter on the discharge of the duties 
which devolve upon me in that capacity, without first 
giving expression to my deep sense of the honor of 
an office, which has been held heretofore by so many 
distinguished men. 

Fifty-eight years have now elapsed since this Asso- 
ciation received its Charter of Incorporation from the 
Legislature of Massachusetts. During that period its 
Presidency has been held, successively, by the gallant 
Revolutionary patriot, John Brooks ; by the illustrious 
defender of the Constitution of the United States, Daniel 
Webster ; by the grand old Boston merchant and phi- 
lanthropist, Thomas Handasyd Perkins ; by that ster- 
ling statesman and admirable Governor, Levi Lincoln ; 
by that eminent and learned jurist and Judge, William 
Prescott ; by the amiable physician. Dr. Abner Phelps ; 
by the accomplished and independent editor, Joseph T. 



Buckingliam ; by the worthy and faithful historian of 
the Association, George AVashington Warren ; and, 
lastly, by the devoted and excellent Historian of the 
battle itself, and of everything relating to that battle, 
— including "The Siege of Boston," "The Life of 
AVarren," and "The Rise of the Republic," — our la- 
mented friend, whose name I cannot pronounce with- 
out a fresh sense of his loss to us and to the history 
of his country, — Richard Frothingham. 

If, my friends, at the termination of the brief service 
on which I can look back, and the certainly not longer 
service to which I may look forward, my own name 
shall not be thought unworthy of such associations, I 
shall count it to have been among the crowning distinc- 
tions of a life now drawing to its close. 

One, only, of my predecessors is left among the liv- 
ing, — Mr. Warren, — whose term of service, as I may 
not forget, equals those of all the others put together, 
and whose presence is thus welcomed with peculiar 
interest on this occasion. 

One, only, of those predecessors was present, as a 
witness and as an actor, at the conflict which our mon- 
ument commemorates, — John Brooks, of Medford, — 
remembered well by some of us as a model governor of 
Massachusetts, but in 1775 a young Major in Colonel 
Frye's regiment; who aided the heroic Prescott in the 
construction of the redoubt; who was his chosen com- 
panion in that midnight stroll upon the shore, to make 
sure that the British sentinels had taken no alarm and 
were still crying " All 's well ; " and who only left this 
hill, at last, to bear a message, on foot, from Prescott 
to General Ward at Cambridge, — across that Neck 



of fire, on which the veteran Pomeroy, while willingly 
exposing his own life, would not risk the life of a 
borrowed horse, amid the ceaseless storm of shot and 
shell which was sweeping over it from floating bat- 
teries and from fixed batteries, from the Lively and the 
Falcon and the Glasgow and the Somerset and the 
Cerberus ; — a message, not asking to be relieved by 
other troops, for Prescott scorned the idea that the 
men who had raised the v^orks had not the best right, 
and were not the best able, to defend them, but a 
message imploring those reinforcements and supplies, 
of men, of ammunition, and of food, which had been 
promised the night before, but most of which never 
came, or came too late. That was the perilous ser- 
vice performed by our first presiding officer. That 
was the ordeal to which he was subjected. I may 
well congratulate myself that no such crucial test of 
courage has been transmitted as an heirloom of this 
Chair, or is prescribed as an indispensable qualifica- 
tion of those who occupy it. 

For those who have succeeded Governor Brooks, it 
has been privilege and pride enough to assist in the 
erection and preservation of this noble shaft ; in com- 
memorating from year to year the patriotism and hero- 
ism of the men who fought this first great battle of 
the American Revolution ; and in illustrating the prin- 
ciples and motives which inspired and actuated them. 
This duty — I need hardly say — has been discharged 
faithfully and fully in the past, and but little remains 
to be done by any one hereafter. The inspiration and 
influence which have already proceeded from these 
silent blocks of granite, since they were first hewn out 



from yonder Quincy quarries, — as they were slowly 
piled up through a period of eighteen years, to the 
height of two hundred and twenty-one feet, and as they 
have since stood in their majestic unity and grandeur, 
— can never be over-estimated. The words which 
have been uttered at its base and around it, from the 
first magnificent address of Daniel Webster, the orator 
alike of the corner-stone and of the capstone, down to 
the present hour, have been second to no other inspi- 
ration or influence, since those of the battle itself, in 
animating and impelling the sons to emulate the glory 
of their fathers, and to be ever ready and ever resolved 
to jeopard their lives, on the high places of the field, 
in defence of Union and Liberty. 

For indeed, my friends, this stately obelisk is no mere 
mute memorial of the past, but a living, speaking pledge 
for the future, that those free institutions for which 
the first great struggle was made here, at the very 
point of the bayonet, shall here and always find glad 
and gallant defenders, whenever and wherever those 
institutions shall be assailed. It is not a structure — 
thanks to those who designed and built it — capable of 
being desecrated or perverted — as, alas ! the Old South 
has been, and the Old State House still is — to pur- 
poses of gain or traffic. It occupies ground on which 
no speculation would ever dare to encroach, or even to 
cast a rapacious or a covetous eye. Its simple, massive 
masonry may defy any less unimaginable convulsion 
than such as has recently overwhelmed the poor island 
of Chios. Not a Monolith ; not of any mythological 
or mythical origin ; there will be no temptation for 
archaeologists to dislocate it from its rightful surround- 



ings, and bear it away to strange and uncongenial 
climes. Here, on the very spot where Prescott fought 
and Warren fell, it will stand and tell its wondrous 
story of the birth of American Liberty, in plain, dis- 
tinct, unmistakable characters, to the thousands and 
tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands who shall 
visit it or gaze upon it, for as many centuries as the 
equivocal hieroglyphics of the obelisk of Alexandria, 
now so marvellously translated to the Central Park at 
New York, have told the story of Egyptian despots 
or dynasties. 

How different a story ! What gratitude to God and 
man should swell our hearts at this hour, as such a con- 
trast is even suggested, — as we turn from the contempla- 
tion of Pharaohs and Ptolemies to that of our august 
and only Washington, and from the darkness of Pagan- 
ism to the glorious light of Christianity ! Formal 
Doxologies may disappear from Revised New Testa- 
ments, — as they ought to disappear if not found in 
the original text of the Sacred Volume, — but they 
will never fail to be breathed up to the skies from mil- 
lions of pious and patriotic hearts, from generation to 
generation, for the blessings of civil and religious Free- 
dom, until those blessings shall cease to be enjoyed 
and appreciated ! 

xA.nd now, fellow-citizens, in hailing the return of a 
day, which can hardly be counted of inferior interest or 
importance to any day in the whole illuminated calendar 
of the American Revolution, and in welcoming you all, 
as it is my official province to do, to its renewed obser- 
vance on these consecrated Heights, I have no purpose 



6 

of entering upon any detailed historical discourse. The 
17th of June, 1775, as its successive anniversaries come 
round, from year to year, will never be overlooked, nor 
ever fail to awaken fresh emotions of gratitude and joy 
in every American breast. But the more formal and 
stately commemorations of the day may well succeed 
each other at considerable intervals. Our magnificent 
Centennial celebration, with all its brilliant incidents and 
utterances, is still too fresh in our remembrance, and in 
the remembrance of the whole country, to bear any early 
repetition. 'Nor would we forget, if we could forget, 
that other Centennial celebrations are now rightfully in 
order. 

The year '75 belonged peculiarly to Massachusetts, 
— to Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill. The 
whole nation recognized our claim. From the East 
and the West, from the North and the South, alike, — 
to yonder plains of the first blood, and to this hill of the 
first battle, — the people were seen flocking in numbers 
which could not be counted. Citizens and soldiers of 
almost every variety of military or civil association ; 
representative organizations and representative men ; 
mayors of cities, governors of States, senators and cabi- 
net officers, the President of the United States to one of 
them, and the Vice-President to both, came gladly, at 
the call of Massachusetts, to unite with her in her 
sumptuous and splendid ceremonials. Six years only 
have since elapsed, during which we have rejoiced to 
see other States, and other cities and towns, in New 
York and New Jersey, in Vermont and Pennsylvania, 
in North Carolina and South Carolina, and I know 
not where besides, holding high holidays on the hun- 



dredth anniversaries of events which have illustrated 
their own annals. 

Another great year of our Lord and of Liberty has 
at length arrived, and is already far advanced ; and the 
attention of the whole country is now justly turned to 
that momentous Southern campaign of 1781, which 
began with the great battle of the Cowpens, — just 
celebrated so worthily, — and which ended with the 
surrender of the British Army to the allied forces of 
America and France at Yorktown. I need not say that 
all our hearts ought to be, and are, with our brethren of 
the South, as they are so eagerly preparing to celebrate 
the great events which occurred on their own soil. We 
should shrink from anything which might even seem 
like competition, by renewing a general and costly 
celebration here. Rather let our sympathies be freely 
offered, and our contributions be liberally remitted, to 
them; and let us show how heartily we unite with them 
in th6ir just pride and exultation, that the soil of the 
Old Dominion was privileged to be the scene of the 
crowning victory of American Independence. And may 
the blended associations and memories of Yorktown and 
Bunker Hill supply the reciprocal warp and woof, for 
weaving afresh any ties of mutual respect and mutual 
affection which may have been unstrung or loosened 
by the storm of civil war, and which may still remain 
snarled and tangled, and for renewing those chords of 
brotherhood, and those bonds of Union, which shall be 
as imperishable as the glories of our common Fathers ! 

I have said, felk)w-citizens, that I did not come here 
to-day to deliver any elaborate or exhaustive historical 



8 

discourse. Indeed, where could I turn, — even if it were 
expected or desired by any one that I should describe 
in detail the struggle which has made this hill so his- 
toric and so hallowed, — where could I turn for any 
materials which have not already become hackneyed and 
threadbare, and which are not as familiar as household 
words to those who surround me? No battle of its size, 
or of any size, the world over, from Marathon to Water- 
loo, or earlier or later, on either side of the ocean, has 
been more thoroughly investigated, and more minutely 
depicted, than that which took place here one hundred 
and six years ago to-day. Of all its antecedents and 
inducing causes, — the Stamp Act, the Writs of Assist- 
ance, the British Regiments, the Boston Massacre, the 
Tea Tax, the Tea Party, the Boston Port Bill, Lexing- 
ton, Concord, — of which one of them all, has a single 
fact, a single tradition, a single illustration, eluded the 
research of our historians and antiquarians, our orators 
and poets "? And as to the conflict itself, — to which they 
all pointed and led, like so many guide-posts or railway 
tracks to a common and predestined terminus, — what 
could be added to the brilliant chapters of Bancroft, 
the thrilling sketch of Washington Irving, the careful 
illustrations of Lossing, the elaborate and faithful narra- 
tive of Frothingham, and the earlier and most valuable 
history of Dr. George E. Ellis, who made even Froth- 
ingham his debtor? Meantime, as I am but too con- 
scious, the rhetoric, as well as the record, has been 
drawn upon to the last dreg. Not only have Webster 
and Everett, again and again, condensed and crystal- 
lized all the great scenes and incid^ts and emotions 
of the day in those consummate phrases and periods 



9 

of theirs, which defy all rivalry, and supply the most 
inspiring and wholesome declamation for all our schools, 

— but the whole story was told again, with signal feli- 
city and skill, in all the fulness of its impressive details, 
by the Orator of the Centennial, General Devens, whose 
presence is always so welcome in his native Charles- 
town. 

No one, I think, with such histories and field-books 
and hand-books at command, and who has not wholly 
neglected such sources of information, can come up to 
these consecrated heights, to this Mons Sacer of New 
England, on this day or on any day, without finding the 
whole scene unrolling itself before his eye like some 
grand stereoscopic panorama. He recalls the sudden 
gathering of the three selected Massachusetts regiments, 

— with the little Connecticut fatigue party under the 
intrepid Knowlton, — in front of General Ward's head- 
quarters at Cambridge, on the evening of the 16th of 
June. He sees Prescott taking command, agreeably to 
the order of the Commander-in-chief. He hears, as 
through a telephone, the solemn and fervent prayer of 
President Langdon, before they moved from the Com- 
mon. He takes up the silent march with them, just as 
the clock strikes nine, and follows close by the side of 
those two sergeants, bearing dark lanterns, behind Pres- 
cott leading the way. He halts with them after crossing 
to this peninsula, as they approach the scene of their 
destination, and shares their perplexing uncertainties as 
to the true place for their proposed intrenchments. He 
is here with them at last, on this very spot, with nothing 
brighter than starlight, thank Heaven, when they first 
arrived, to betray them to the British in Boston, and 



10 

with only a little "remnant of a waning moon" after- 
wards. He hears and sees the first spades and pickaxes 
struck into the now sacred sod just as the Boston clocks 
strike twelve, — giving their ominous warning that the 
night is far spent, that the day is at hand, that four 
hours at most remain before the darkness shall be gone, 
when they and their works must be exposed to the 
view and the assault of the enemy. But he sees a 
thousand strong arms, every one with a patriot's will 
behind it, steadily and vigorously improving every in- 
stant of those hours ; and the dawning of that bright 
midsummer St. Botolph's day finds him standing with 
Prescott, within an almost finished redoubt of six or 
seven feet in height, inclosing a space of eight rods 
square, and swarming with the sons of Liberty. 

But, alas, the panorama is but half unrolled. Crinj- 
son folds, not altogether the refiections of a blazing, fiery 
sunshine, begin to show themselves, as the vision of our 
imaginary visitor proceeds. He witnesses the amaze- 
ment and consternation of the British sentinels on ship 
and shore, as they rouse themselves and rub their eyes 
to descry the rebel intrenchments which have sprung 
up like a prodigy. He hears the angry and furious 
cannonade which bursts forth at once from the dogs 
of war anchored in the stream. He walks the parapet 
with Prescott, to give confidence and courage to his 
soldiers, as they see one of their number, for the first 
time, shot down and dying at their side. He perceives 
the hurried preparations in Boston ; he sees the dra- 
goons galloping with orders from the Province House 
to the camp on the Common ; he hears the rattle of 
the artillery wagons along the pavements. The big 



11 

barges for transportation come at length in sight, with 
the glittering brass six-pounders in their bows, and 
crowded from stem to stern with grenadiers and light 
infantry and marines in their gay scarlet uniforms. 
He sees them landing at yonder Morton's Point, and 
coolly refreshing themselves on the grass for an encoun- 
ter with our half-starved and almost wholly exhausted 
raw militia. The first onset, with its grand and triumph- 
ant repulse ; the second onset, while Charlestown is now 
blazing, and amid every circumstance and complication 
of horror, but with its even grander and still more tri- 
umphant repulse, — these pass rapidly before his exult- 
ing eye. An interval now occurs. " Will they come 
on again 1 " is heard on the American side. " It Avould 
be downright butchery for us," is heard from some of 
the British soldiers on the other side. And, certainly, 
the pluck of old Mother England was never more sig- 
nally displayed on our soil, or on any other soil beneath 
the sun, than when General Sir William Howe, as brave 
in the field as he was sometimes irresolute and unskilful 
in strategy, with Brigadier Pigot as his lieutenant, and 
with Sir Henry Clinton as a volunteer, led up what 
remained of grenadiers and light infantry — their knap- 
sacks stripped from their backs, and relying wholly on 
their bayonets — to that third terrific onslaught, which 
comes at last to sear the very eyeballs of any actual, 
or even imaginary, beholder. But there was pluck at 
the top of the hill as well as at the bottom, or on the 
way up, — bone of the same bone, flesh of the same 
flesh, blood of the same blood, — the valor of Old Eng- 
land, inflamed and electrified by the spirit of Liberty, 
in the heart, mind, and muscle of New England. 



12 

Prescott with his little band is seen standing un- 
daunted at bay ; displaying still and ever, — as Eben- 
ezer Bancroft, of Tyngsborough, a captain in Bridge's 
regiment, who fought bravely and w^as wounded at his 
side, bore special witness that he had displayed through 
the hottest of the fight, — a coolness and self-piossession 
that would do honor to the greatest hero of any age. 
But, alas, their ammunition is exhausted, and the British 
have overheard that it is. The very last artillery car- 
tridge has already been broken up and distributed to 
the sharpshooters, and there are but fifty bayonets for 
the whole remaining band, — hardly a hundred and fifty 
of them left. The grenadiers and marines are already 
seen scaling the ramparts. The brave but rash Major 
Pitcairn, who had given the first fatal order to fire at 
Lexington, and who was now the first to enter here, 
falls mortally wounded. But hundreds of his men are 
close behind him, and bayonets and clubbed muskets 
are now making a chaotic scene of carnage and havoc 
which beggars all imagination. The redoubt can no 
longer be held against such desperate odds, and the 
voice of its wise, as well as fearless, commander is at 
length heard, giving the word to retire. 

The battle, indeed, still rages at earthworks and at 
rail-fences, — almost a separate engagement, — where 
Stark and Pomeroy and Knowlton have been doing such 
gallant service from the beginning ; and where Putnam, 
who had advised and accompanied the original move- 
ment, and had displayed every attribute of his heroic 
nature in promoting its successful prosecution, in almost 
every stage of its progress, is seen still striving to make 
a last stand on the neighboring hill-top, and to cover 



13 

the retreat of his brave comrades from the redoubt. 
But all this is auxiliary and incidental, as it all is vain. 
It is one and the same battle, in its inception and in its 
close. The day is decided ; the conflict ended ; and 
Prescott, among the very last to quit the intrenchments, 
having resolved never to be taken alive, and parrying 
the thrusts of British bayonets by dint of his trusty 
blade, comes out, with garments scorched and pierced, 
but himself providentially unscathed ; and he may now 
be seen, on the final fold of our imaginary panorama, at 
the head-quarters of General Ward, at Cambridge, — 
from which he started the evening before, — to report 
that he had executed his orders, had made the best 
fight in his power, and had yielded at last only to 
superior force. 

Such, fellow-citizens and friends, are the faint outlines 
of a picture which passes rapidly along before any toler- 
ably instructed eye, as it looks out on these surround- 
ings, — impressing itself on retina and lens as vividly 
and distinctly as Boston's Centennial pageant last au- 
tumn, or Harvard's Greek Play last month, was im- 
pressed on every eye which witnessed either of them. 
Such a picture is enough for this occasion. These 
Charlestown Heights, of which it might almost have 
been said, as Virgil said of the afterwards famous Alban 
Mount, — 

" Turn neque nomen erat, uec honos, aut gloria Monti," — 

which then had neither glory nor honor, nor even dis- 
tinct and well-defined names, — Bunker Hill and its 
dependent slope, Breed, — were lost to us on that day. 



14 

The consequences of the battle, and even the confused 
details of it, developed themselves slowly. It took 
time for an immediate defeat to put on the aspect 
and wear the g-lories of a triumph. I doubt not that 
some of the old Mandamus Councillors in Boston went 
to their beds that night, thinking what a fine conspic- 
uous site this would be, for setting up a monument of 
solemn warning, for all time to come, of the disasters 
which were sure to fall on the heads of Rebels against 
British rule ! Even by our own New England patriots 
the result, we are told, was regarded at first not with- 
out disappointment and even indignation ; and some 
of the contemporary American accounts, private and 
official, are said to have been rather in the tone of 
apology, or even of censure, than of exultation. No- 
body for years, adds Frothingham, came forward to 
claim the honor of having directed this battle. 

No wonder that a cloud of uncertainty so long rested 
on the exact course and conduct of this eventful action. 
Every one was wholly occupied in making history : 
there was no leisure for writing history. It was a sudden 
movement. It was a secret movement. It was designed 
only to get the start of the British by an advance of 
our line of intrenchments. No one imagined that it 
would involve a battle, and no adequate provision was 
made for such an unexpected contingency. The very 
order for its execution, — the order of Ward to Pres- 
cott, — the only order from any one, or to any one, 
relating to it, was, without doubt, designedly withheld 
from the order-book of the Commander-in-chief at 
Cambridge. It certainly has never been found. 

Meantime, one incident of the conflict had over- 



15 

whelmed the whole people with grief. The death of 
Warren, the President of the Provincial Congress, the 
Chairman of the Committee of Safety, the only chief 
executive magistrate which Massachusetts then had, 
and who, only three days before, had been chosen one 
of the major-generals of her forces, — in the bloom of his 
manhood, " the expectancy and rose of the fair State," 
beloved and trusted by all, — could not, and did not, 
fail to create a sorrow and a shock which absorbed 
all hearts. The fall of glorious John Hampden at 
Chalgrove Field is the only parallel in history to that 
of Joseph Warren at Bunker Hill. That thrilling la- 
ment, — almost recalling the wail of David over Absa- 
lom, — to which Webster gave utterance here in 1825, 
making the whole air around him vibrate and tremble 
to the pathos of his transcendent tones, and leaving 
hardly an unmoved heart or an unmoistened eye in 
his whole vast audience, — was but a faint echo of the 
deep distress into which that event had plunged all 
New England fifty years before. But though one of 
Warren's proudest distinctions will ever be, that he came 
to this hill as a Volunteer, before he had received any 
military commission, and that he nobly declined to as- 
sume any authority, — when Putnam proposed to take 
his orders at the rail-fence, and again when Prescott 
offered him the command at the redoubt, — his name 
was long associated, both at home and abroad, with 
the chief leadership of an action to which he had come 
with a musket on his shoulder, — though he may 
have exchanged it for a sword before he fell. 

Everything, indeed, was in doubt and confusion at 
that moment. Even Warren's death was not known 



16 

for a certainty at Cambridge for several days after it 
occurred, and as late as the 19tli the vote of the 
Provincial Congress, providing for the choice of his suc- 
cessor, spoke of him as of one " supposed to be killed." 
All our military affairs were in a state of transition, 
reorganization, and complete change. The war was to 
be no longer a local or provincial war. The Conti- 
nental Congress at Philadelphia had already adopted 
it as a war of the United Colonies ; and, on the very 
day on which Warren fell, they had drawn up and 
ratified a commission, as General and Commander-in- 
chief of all such forces as are, or shall be, raised for the 
maintenance and preservation of American Liberty, for 
George Washington, of Virginia. Congress had heard 
nothing about Bunker Hill, when this Providential ap- 
pointment was made. Lexington and Concord, of which 
the tidings had reached them some weeks before, had 
been enough to ripen their counsels and settle their 
policy. And now the public mind in this quarter was 
too much engrossed with the advent of Washington to 
Cambridge, and the great results which were to be 
expected, to busy itself much with the details of what 
was considered a mere foregone defeat. 

It was only when Washington himself, hearing at 
New York or Trenton, on his way to Cambridge, of 
what had occurred here, had expressed his renewed and 
confirmed conviction that the liberties of America were 
now safe ; it was only when Franklin, hearing of it in 
France, wrote to his friends in London, "Americans 
will fight ; England has lost her colonics forever ; " it 
was only when Gage had written to Lord Dartmouth 
that " the rebels are not the despicable rabble too many 



17 

have supposed them to be. . . The number of killed 
and wounded is greater than our forces can aiford to 
lose. . . The conquest of this country is not easy. . . 
I think it my duty to let your Lordship know the true 
situation of affairs ; " it was, certainly, only when from 
all the American Colonies there had come voices of 
congratulation and good cheer, recognizing the momen- 
tous character of the battle, the bravery with which it 
had been fought, and the conclusive evidence it had 
afforded that the undisciplined yeomanry of the country 
were not afraid to confront the veteran armies of Old 
England at the point of the bayonet in defence of their 
rights and liberties ; — it was only then, that its true im- 
portance began to be attached to the battle of Bunker 
Hill, as the first regular battle of the American Revolu- 
tion, and the most eventful in its consequences, — 
especially in those far-reaching moral influences which 
were to be felt, and which were felt, to the very end of 
the war. 

A much longer time was to elapse before the record 
of that day was to be summed up, as it has recently 
been, by the latest and highest authority on " the 
Battles of the Revolution," as " the record of a battle 
which in less than two hours destroyed a town, laid 
fifteen hundred men upon the battle-field, equalized 
the relations of veterans and militia, aroused three 
millions of people to a definite struggle for National 
Independence, and fairly inaugurated the war for its 
accomplishment." ^ 

Let me not omit, however, to add, that no more 

^ " Battles of the American Revolution." By Colonel Henry B. Car- 
rington, U. S. A. 



18 

impressive, or more generous, or more just and welcome 
tribute has ever been paid to the men and the deeds 
we are commemorating to-day, than that which may be 
found in the " Memoirs of the Southern Campaign of 
the Ee volution," where an incidental allusion to Bunker 
Hill concludes with these emphatic words : " The mili- 
tary annals of the world rarely furnish an achievement 
which equals the firmness and courage displayed on that 
proud day by the gallant band of Americans ; and it 
certainly stands first in the brilliant events of our war. 
When future generations shall inquire where are the 
men who gained the highest prize of glory in the ardu- 
ous contest which ushered in our nation's birth, upon 
Prescott and his companions in arms will the eye of 
history beam." 

These are the words written and published seventy 
years ago by Henry Lee, of Virginia, the gallant com- 
mander of the famous Cavalry Legion, known familiarly 
as " Light Horse Harry," and the father of one, whose 
purity of character and brilliancy of accomplishments 
compelled each one of us who knew him to exclaim, 
as the late war for the Union went on, " Talis quum 
sis, utinam noster esses ! " Would we could call so 
grand a leader ours ! 

Frothingham has told us truly, that no one, for years, 
came forward to claim the honor of having directed this 
battle. And there was at least one man, — of whom 
Everett well said, " The modesty of this sterling patriot 
was equal to his heroism," — who never, to the end 
of his life, made any boastful claim for himself; who 
was contented with stating the facts of that eventful 
day in reply to the inquiries of John Adams, and in 



19 

repeated conversations with his own son, and who 
then awaited the judgment of history, — letting all con- 
siderations of personal fame and personal glory go, in 
the proud consciousness of having done his duty. 

And now, fellow-citizens, we are gathered here to- 
day to pay a long-postponed debt, to fulfil a long- 
neslected obligation. We have come to sanction and 
ratify the award of history, as we find it in the pages of 
Ellis and Irving and Frothingham and Bancroft, to 
mention no others, by accepting this splendid gift from 
a goodly company of our fellow-citizens, of whose names 
Dr. Ellis, I beheve, — to whose inspiration we primarily 
owe it, — is the sole depositary ; and by placing the 
statue of Colonel William Prescott in the very front of 
our noble monument, — thus recognizing him in his 
true relation to the grand action which it commemorates, 
and of which he was nothing less than the commander. 
We do so in full remembrance of those memorable 
words of Webster, which have almost the solemnity 
and the weight of a judicial decision : " In truth, if there 
was any commander-in-chief in the field, it was Prescott. 
From the first breaking of the ground to the retreat, he 
acted the most important part ; and if it were proper 
to give the battle a name, from any distinguished agent 
in it, it should be called Prescott's Battle." 

Our celebration to-day has this sole and simple end ; 
and it becomes me therefore, my friends, to devote the 
little remnant of my address to a brief notice of the career 
and character of the man we are assembled to honor. 

Descended from a good Puritan stock which had emi- 
grated from Lancashire in Old England, and established 
a home in New England, as early as 1640, he was born 



20 

in Groton, in the good old county of Middlesex, on the 
20th of February, 1726. Of his boyhood, and common- 
school education, there are no details. But soon after 
arriving at manhood, we find him occupying a tract of 
land, — a few miles beyond the present limits of Groton, 
— a part of which may have been included in a grant 
from the town to his father, Hon. Benjamin Prescott, for 
valuable services, but a part of which is said to have 
been purchased of the Indians, — then numerous in 
that region, — and which his great-grandson still holds 
by the original Indian title. Here he was more or less 
instrumental, with the patriot clergyman of the parish, 
Joseph Emerson, who had served as a chaplain under 
Sir William Pepperell, in having that part of Groton 
set off into a separate district, and named Pepperell, in 
honor of the conqueror of Louisburg. 

Meantime, the soldierly spirit which belonged to his 
nature, and which had been called into exercise by the 
proximity of the savages, had led him as early as Oc- 
tober, 1746, — when the approach of a formidable 
French fleet had created a consternation in New Eng- 
land, — to enlist in the company of Captain William 
Lawrence, and march for the defence of Boston. A 
few years later he takes the oflice of a lieutenant in the 
local militia, and, in 1755, proceeds with his regiment 
to Nova Scotia. Serving there under General Winslow, 
his gallantry attracted special attention, and he was 
urged by the General to accept a commission in the 
regular army. Declining this ofl"er, he returned home 
to receive the promotion to a captaincy. A happy 
marriage soon followed, and he remained for nearly 
twenty years as a farmer and good citizen at his Pep- 



21 

perell home ; — as Addison said of some one of the 
heroes of his " Campaign," — 

" In hours of peace content to be unknown, 
And only in the field of battle shown." 

But the controversies with the mother country were 
by no means unobserved by him. The bill for shutting 
up the port of Boston, with the view of starving the 
people into submission and compliance, signed by the 
King on the 31st of March, and which went into opera- 
tion on the 1st of June, 1774, stirred the feelings and 
called forth the succors of the whole continent. Letters 
of sympathy and supplies of provisions poured in upon 
our Boston Committee of Correspondence, in answer to 
their appeal, from every quarter. The earliest letter but 
two, in order of date, was signed William Prescott, 
dated Pepperell, 4th of July, by order of the committee 
of that always patriotic town, — sending at once forty 
bushels of grain, promising further assistance with pro- 
visions and with men, and invoking them " to stand firm 
in the common cause." The cause of Boston was then 
the cause of all. 

But the untiring research of the historian Bancroft 
brought to light for the first time, some years ago, a 
still more important and memorable letter from Pres- 
cott, in behalf of his fellow-farmers and towns-people, 
addressed, in the following August, to the men of Bos- 
ton, which breathes the full spirit of Lexington and 
Concord and Bunker Hill conjoined, not without a 
strong foretaste of the still distant 4th of July. " Be 
not dismayed nor disheartened," it says, " in this great 
day of trials. We heartily sympathize with you, and are 
always ready to do all in our power for your support, 



22 

comfort, and relief; knowing that Providence has placed 
you where you must stand the first shock. We consider 
that we are all embarked in one bottom, and must sink or 
swim together. We think if we submit to those regula- 
tions, all is gone. Our forefathers passed the vast Atlan- 
tic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy 
their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them 
to their posterity. Their children have waded through 
seas of difficulty, to leave us free and happy in the en- 
joyment of English privileges. Now, if we should give 
them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed ? Is 
not a glorious death in defence of our liberties better 
than a short, infamous life, and our memory to be had in 
detestation to the latest posterity 1 Let us all be of one 
heart, and stand fast in the liberties wherewith Christ 
has made us free ; and may he of his infinite mercy 
errant us deliverance out of all our troubles." 

No braver, nobler words', than these of Prescott are 
found in all the records of that momentous period. 

And now, the time having fully come for testing 
these pledges of readiness for the last resort of an 
oppressed people, and the voices of Joseph Hawley and 
Patrick Henry having been distinctly heard, responding 
to each other from Massachusetts to Virginia, " We 
must fight," — Prescott is seen in command of a regiment 
of minute-men. At the first alarm that blood had been 
shed at Lexington, and that fighting was still going on 
at Concord, on the 19th of April, he rallies that regi- 
ment without an instant's delay, and leads them at once 
to the scene. Arriving too late to join in the pursuit 
of Lord Percy and his flying regulars, he proceeds to 
Cambridge, and there awaits events, till, on the follow- 



23 

ing 16th of June, he receives the order from General 
"Ward — the commander-m-chief of the Massachusetts 
forces, with whom he had been in constant communi- 
cation and consultation — to conduct the secret expe- 
dition which resulted in the battle of Bunker Hill. 

All that remains of his career, after that battle was 
over, may be summarily despatched. He had origi- 
nally enhsted for eight months, hoping and believing 
that troops would not be needed for a longer period; 
but he continued in the service until the close of 
1776, when Boston had been freed from the enemy, 
when Independence had been declared, and when 
the war had been transferred to other parts of the 
country. Nor did he leave it then, until he had 
commanded the garrison on Governor's Island in the 
harbor of New York, and had attracted the notice 
and commendation of Washington by the good order 
in which he brought off his regiment, when the Amer- 
ican army was compelled to retire from the city. He 
was then more than fifty years old, and physical in- 
firmities incapacitated him for the saddle. But in the 
autumn of 1777 he once more appears, as a Volun- 
teer, at the battle which ended in the surrender of Bur- 
goyne ; and Trumbull, the artist, who unconsciously, 
and to his own often expressed regret, did him such 
injustice in his fancy sketch of the battle on this hill, 
has made ample amends in his picture of Burgoyne's 
Surrender, — now in the rotunda of the Capitol at Wash- 
ington, — by giving him a place, musket in hand, in the 
principal group, next to the gallant Morgan of the Vir- 
ginia Riflemen, whose statue, by a striking coincidence, 
has just been unveiled at the Cowpens, at the Centen- 



24 

nial celebration of that great South Carolina battle of 
which Morgan was the hero, as Prescott was the hero 
of this. No two men are more worthy to stand side 
by side in our National Historic gallery than William 
Prescott and Daniel Morgan.^ Honor — joint honor — 
to the memories of them both in all time to come, from 
every tongue and every heart throughout our land ! 

Again Prescott withdraws to his farm at Pepperell, 
where he constantly exhibits a vigilant interest, and 
exercises a wholesome influence, in the affairs of the 
town and of the State, serving his fellow-citizens as a 
Magistrate and a Selectman, coming down to Boston in 
three several years as their Representative in the State 
Legislature, and once more, buckling on his sword, it is 
said, during Shays' Rebellion in 1787, to defend the 
courts of justice at Concord. A man of strong mind, 
determined will, benevolent as he was brave, liberal even 
beyond his means, of courteous manners, the pride of 
his neighborhood, delighting to show kindness and hos- 
pitality to his old fellow-soldiers, he died at length on 
the 13th of October, 1795, on the verge of threescore 
years and ten, and was buried with military honors. 

He left a name, I need not say, not only to be hon- 
ored in its own right, as long as Bunker Hill shall be 
a watchword of heroism and patriotism in our land, but 
to be borne, as it has been, with eminent distinction 
by his only son, the learned and admirable judge and 
jurist, and by his accomplished and distinguished grand- 
son, beloved by all who knew him, whose " Ferdinand 
and Isabella," and " Conquest of Mexico and Peru," and 
" History of Philip II.," were the earliest triumphs in 

1 Note A at the end. 



25 

American historical literature, and were achieved under 
infirmities and trials that would have daunted any 
heart, which had not inherited a full measure of the 
bravery we are here to commemorate. 

Nor may I wholly omit to recognize the interest 
added to this occasion, by the presence of a venerable 
lady, — his only surviving grandchild, — who, apart 
from those personal gifts and graces to which I should 
not be pardoned for alluding, brings to the memories of 
this hour another illustrious name in American history, 
— the name of Dexter, — associated, in one genera- 
tion, with high national service in the Senate and in 
the Cabinet, and, in two generations, with eminent 
legal learning, ability, and eloquence. 

But I must not dwell longer on any personal topics, 
however attractive, and must hasten to a conclusion of 
this address. 

I have said, fellow-citizens, that we were here, to- 
day, to fulfil a long-postponed obligation, to pay a 
long-deferred debt. But let me not be thought for a 
moment to imply, that there is anything really lost, 
anything really to be regretted, as we now unveil this 
noble Statue, and hail it henceforth, for all years to 
come, as the frontispiece and figure-head of this con- 
secrated ground. The lapse of time may have evinced 
a want of quick appreciation on the part of others, but 
it has taken away nothing from the merits or the just 
renown of Prescott. On the contrary, it has given an 
additional and most impressive significance to this me- 
morial, far more than a compensation for any delay in 
its erection. 

4 



26 

I would by no means undervalue or disparage the 
spontaneous tributes which so often, of late, have im- 
mediately followed the deaths of distinguished men, 
here and elsewhere, and which are fast adorning so 
many of the public squares and parks of our country 
— at Washington, at New York, and in Boston, as well 
as in other of our great cities — with the bronze or 
marble forms of those who have been lost to our civil 
or military service. Such manifestations are possible 
in our day and generation, when wealth is so abun- 
dant, and when art is so prolific. They would have 
been all but impossible, for us, a century, or even half 
a century, ago. They do honor to the men who are 
the subjects of them. They do honor to the natural 
and irrepressible emotions which prompt them. Like 
the decorations of the Soldiers' Graves, or the dedica- 
tion of the Soldiers' Homes, they challenge and receive 
the sympathies of all our hearts. They are, however, 
the manifestations of the moment, and bespeak but the 
impulses of the hour. 

But when it was my privilege, just a quarter of a 
century ago, to inaugurate, and give the word for un- 
veiling, the first bronze statue which had ever been 
erected in the open air within the limits of Boston, 
and when I reflected that nearly seventy years had 
then elapsed since the death, and more than a hun- 
dred and fifty years since the birth, of Benjamin Frank- 
lin, whom that statue so admirably portrayed ; when, 
more recently, the statue of Samuel Adams was un- 
veiled at the old North End of our city, nearly eighty 
years after his death, and almost a hundred and fifty 
years after his birth ; and when, later still, two hun- 



27 

dred and ninety-two years after his birth, and two 
hundred and thirty-one years after his death, the statue 
of John Winthrop was seen standing in yonder Scollay 
Square, with the charter of Massachusetts in his hand, 
looking out upon the great city, of more than three 
hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, which he had 
founded, — I could not help feeling that an accumu- 
lated interest, an enhanced and augmented glory, would 
gather around those memorials for every year which 
had been allowed to pass since they were so richly 
deserved; and that the judgment of posterity had at 
last confirmed and ratified the award, which history 
had long ago pronounced, upon the merits of those 
whom they represented. 

And so again, emphatically, here, to-day, in inaugu- 
rating this splendid statue of William Prescott, eighty- 
six years after he was laid in his humble grave, a hun- 
dred and fifty-five years after his birth, and a hundred 
and six years after he stood, where we now stand, in 
command of this momentous battle, we may all well 
feel that the tribute has not come a day too late for his 
permanent fame and glory. We may even rejoice that 
no partial or premature commemoration of him had anti- 
cipated the hour, when not only the wealth of our com- 
munity, and the advancement of American art, should 
suffice for an adequate and durable presentment of his 
heroic form, but when the solid judgment of posterity 
should have sanctioned and confirmed the opinions of 
our best historians, founded on the most careful com- 
parison of the most distinct contemporary records. 
We recognize in such results that History is indeed 
the great corrector, the grand decider, the irreversible 



28 

umpire, the magic touchstone, of truth. An august 
Posthumous Tribunal, like that of the ancient Egyp- 
tians, seems to rise before us, open to every appeal, 
subject to no statute of limitations, — to which the 
prejudices of the moment, or the passions of the multi- 
tude, are but as the light dust of the balance, — and 
pronouncing its solemn and final decisions, upon the 
careers and characters of all whom it summons to the 
bar of its impartial and searching scrutiny. 

Nor can there be, my friends, any higher incentive 
to honest, earnest, patriotic effort, whether in the field 
or in the forum, than such evidences, and such assur- 
ances, that whatever misapprehensions or neglects may 
occur at the moment, and though ofiices and honors, 
portraits and statues, may be withheld or postponed, 
the record will not be lost, truth will not perish, nor 
posterity fail to do that justice, which the jealousy, or 
the ignorance, or, it may be only, the inability, of con- 
temporaries may have left undone. 

It is a most interesting part of the story of this day, 
that when Prescott proceeded to the headquarters of his 
commander-in-chief, General Ward, at Cambridge, and 
reported the results of the expedition which he had 
been ordered to conduct, and had conducted, he added, 
perhaps rashly, but with characteristic courage and 
confidence, that if he could only have three fresh 
regiments, with sufficient equipments and ammunition, 
he would return and retake the hill. I know not 
whether he was ever on this spot again, from that hour 
to the present. But he is here at last ! Thanks to the 
generosity of our public-spirited fellow-citizens, and 



29 

thanks, still more, to the consummate skill of a most 
accomplished American artist, — second to no living 
sculptor of the world, — who has given his whole heart, 
as well as the exquisite cunning of his hand, to the work, 
— he is here at last, " in his habit as he lived ! " 

And now, before I proceed with any poor words of 
my own, let the Statue speak for itself, and display the 
noble form which has too long been concealed from 
your impatient sight ! 

[T/ie statue ivas here unveiled.'\ 

The genius of Story presents him to us now, in the 
light banyan coat and broad-brimmed hat, which he is 
known to have thrown on, during the intense heat of 
the day and of the battle, in exchange for the more 
stately and cumbrous uniform in which he had marched 
from Cambridge the night before, and which may be 
seen dropped beneath . his feet. His eagle gaze is 
riveted with intense energy on the close-approaching 
foe. With his left hand, he is hushing and holding 
back the impetuous soldiers under his command, to 
await his word. With his right hand, he is just ready 
to lift the sword which is to be their signal for action. 
The marked and well-remembered features, which he 
transmitted to his son and grandson, and which may 
be recognized on at least one of his living descendants, 
have enabled the artist to supply, amply and admirably, 
the want of any original portrait of himself. Nothing 
more powerful and living has been seen on this hill 
since he was here before. And that very sword, — 
which so long adorned the library walls of his grand- 
son, — the Historian, — and which is now one of the 



30 

treasures of the Massachusetts Historical Society, — one 
of those " Crossed Swords " whose romantic story has 
so often been told in verse and in prose/ — that same 
sword, which, tradition tells us, he waved where he now 
stands, when, seeing at length " the buttons on the 
coats, ' or, it may have been, " the whites of the eyes," 
of the advancing enemy in their original onslaught, he 
first gave the word "Fire!" — that same sword I am 
privileged to hold up at this moment to your view ; — 
if, indeed, I shall be able to hold it, while it seems ready 
to leap from its scabbard, and to fly from my hand, to 
salute and welcome its brave old master and wearer ! 
No blade which ever came from the forges of Damascus, 
Toledo, or Genoa, was ever witness to greater personal 
perils, or was ever wielded by a bolder arm. 

Prescott stands alone here now. But our little JSIu- 
seum — to be reconstructed, I trust, at no distant day, 
of enduring materials and adequate dimensions — already 
contains a marble statue of the glorious Warren. The 
great first martyr of the Revolution, and the heroic 
commander of this earliest revolutionary battle, are 
now both in place. Around them, on other parts of the 
hill, in other years, some of the gallant leaders who 
rushed to their aid from other States, or from other parts 
of our own State, will, it is hoped, be seen, — Pomeroy, 
and Stark, and Reed, and Knowlton, w^ith Putnam at the 
head of them all. They will all be welcome, whenever 
they may come. Primarily a Massachusetts battle, it was 
peculiarly, also, a 'New England battle ; and all New 
England might well be represented on these Heights. 

1 Note B at the eud. 



31 

But the pre-eminent honors of this occasion are paid, as 
they are due, — and long, long overdue, — to our grand 
Massachusetts, Middlesex, farmer and Patriot. 

He has returned ; — not with three fresh regiments 
only, as he proposed, but with the acclamations of every 
soldier and every citizen within the sound of what is 
being said, or within any knowledge of what is being 
done, here, to-day. He has retaken Bunker Hill ; and, 
with it, the hearts of all who are gathered on it at this 
hour, or who shall be gathered upon it, generation after 
generation, in all the untold centuries of the future ! 



32 



Note A (page 24). 

Daniel Morgan, the hero of the Cowpens, was early in the 
Contmental camp during the siege of Boston. The following 
most interesting account of his arrival at Cambridge is taken from 
the speech, of Judge Christian, of the Virginia Supreme Court of 
Apjjeals, at tlie recent unveiling of Morgan's statue at the Cow- 
pens : — 

"As soon as the Revolutionary war broke out, living then at 
Winchester in the State of Virginia, he raised a company of hardy 
mountaineers, containing ninety-six men, called the ' Morgan Ri- 
fles.' Their unifoi'm was a hunting shirt, on the breast of which 
were stitched in letters by their wives, mothers, and sweethearts 
the Avords, ' Liberty or Death ! ' He marched with this company 
six hundred miles to Boston, where Washington was then in com- 
mand of the Continental forces. Arriving near Boston late in the 
evening, his company were resting under the shade, after their long 
march, when Morgan saw Washington riding out alone. He had 
been with Washington at Braddock's defeat, and recognized him 
at once. He drew up his men into line as Washington approached, 
and Morgan saluting him, said : ' General, I come six hundred miles 
from the right bank of the Potomac and bring to you these gallant 
men, every one of whom knows how to shoot a rifle, and every one 
of whom knows how to die for liberty ; for you see, sir, that each 
man bears his banner upon his breast — "Liberty or Death! " ' 

" History records that the great Washington, leaping upon the 
ground from his horse, went down the line and shook hands with 
every man of Morgan's riflemen, and, the tears streaming down his 
face, remounted his horse and rode off without saying a word." 



O 



O 



CJ 




o 

o 
o 

E- 
E- 

:=) 
o 



o. 

-< 






33 



Note B (page 30). 

" The Crossed Swoeds," which were hung for many years in 
the library of the historian Prescott, " in token of international 
friendship and family alliance," are now arranged over the doors 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society's Library on a tablet, of 
which a heliotype is here given, with inscriptions which tell their 
story. 

They had previously appeared in literature in ThacKeray's 
great Novel " The Virginians," the introduction to which is as 
follows : — 

" On the library wall of one of the most famous writers of Amer- 
ica there hang two crossed swords, which his relatives wore in the 
great war of Independence. The one sword was gallantly drawn 
in the service of the king, the other was the weapon of a brave and 
honored republican soldier. The possessor of the harmless trophy 
has earned for himself a name alike honored in his ancestor's coun- 
try and his own, where genius such as his has always a peaceful 
welcome. The ensuing history reminds me of yonder swords in, 
the historian's study at Boston. In the Revolutionary war, the 
subjects of this story, natives of America, and children of the Old 
Dominion, found themselves engaged on different sides in the quar- 
rel, coming together peaceably at its conclusion, as brethren should, 
their love never having materially diminished, however angrily the 
contest divided them. The colonel in scarlet, and the general in 
blue and buif, hang side by side in the wainscoted parlor of the 
Warringtons, in England." 

They were afterwards the subject of some charming lines by 
Rev. Dr. N. L. Frothingham, read by himself at a meeting of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society in 1859. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



011 699 153 6 



